


Nothing

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, M/M, Really long and dumb monologue basically, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1407910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're not a martyr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not even going to try and lie a little bit: i knowingly used snk characters as my own personal canvas. theres almost no romance. nothing here but a long rant. maybe someday i'll write something less ugly and more poetic. my tumblr is the same as my username on here. this is only a oneshot. i'm basically really tentative to post it because its troublingly personal but i figured why bother, i've already captured it down. sorry for any grammatical errors. sorry for the whole thing.

The scars aren't really there. No, it looks like clean skin. The warmth of pink and pale peach, a thin veil over the windings of veins and tendons and muscles, is mostly entirely smooth. There’s an old one there, though, so old that sometimes you forget that it happened at all. It wasn’t particularly rougher than any of the other times you cracked open, but the --

A text message. It was of someone close to you, someone who honestly held your best interest. But you wish they didn’t. It’s nice, you know, of course, everyone wants someone to care. Especially for us dramatics, we’re all about that flair and we desire the attention like gnats on a piece of sweet fruit. But it’s nothing like how people make it out to be. You realize you don’t want their faith, you don’t want their unbending sense of strength. It’s like they don’t see you at all. They see you as someone who can make it through. But you can’t, and you don’t want to let them down. Not them.

You almost feel bad for letting them in on your secret; That the inside of you is like dead organs piling together in a hollowed carcass. You feel pathetic when you say it. A weakness on your mouth and in your words that slips out of you, the devastating moments of when you realize you’re in way over your head. It’s like when it’s squeezed inside it’s not that bad. But when you let someone in, the dam breaks and you’re drowning, you start to drown. You’re out of breath and you’re frantic. God, it’s nothing like how people make it out to be.

They’re worried about you, rightfully, as you drag your fingers over the skin of your arm. There it is, that one scar. You were stubborn at the time, you halved a pair of dull scissors and shredded the skin over and over in that one spot till it was angry and serrated. You’ve learned since then. You’ve never gone too deep but you’ve always drawn blood. You’ve watched it bubble to the surface in tiny beads from the smooth edge of a razor. They weren’t wrong about that, at least. It _is_ the best weapon. No more dull scissors for you.

You can’t just graze a single spot, the tight burn of the razor instead drawing parallel lines that sometimes cross and sometimes don’t. Some are big some are small. You’re not thinking about it. All you’re thinking about is it’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not enough and then when you decide you’re done, you realize you’ve done a lot. The discord screaming, everything is out of step, off tempo. Sometimes you think there’s poetry in there but you won’t romanticize yourself. What, you think you’re a goddamn martyr? You do this to your fucking self. You’re not a victim.

They’re like ghosts on your skin and after you’ve been running, maybe to catch the train, and you’re pigmented with a dappling red from the cold, you think you can see the white slashes along your arm after they've healed. One time when you were high you said to someone, _I can still see them_ and you pointed at your arm but they just squinted at you and shook their head. They don’t see anything. Never mind, you ignored the subject altogether. You realize if they had looked closer maybe they would have seen but then you remember you really don’t want them to see. You try to not think about whether or not those lines are actually there, or you’re hallucinating them, or they’re just promises for the future kissed delicately on your arm.

One time when you were drunk and you were bleeding and you called your roommate, and you were guilty because she left that party as fast as she could but it wasn’t fast enough. You just sat and sobered and the regret blossomed as the haze evaporated. _I hurt myself,_ you said. _Okay, I’ll be right there._ She’s always taken care of you. And when she cleaned you up and you were wound tight with gauze you felt like you were whole, like it was keeping you together. Like you were made of broken bones. She asked if it was too tight, her brown hair was pretty as it fell over her determined and worried eyes behind her glasses. She looked nice from the party. But the inside of your forearms felt hollow and you wanted to feel kept together so you said no.

Since then, you've remembered how to clean yourself up.

It’s not hard, just takes a bit of maneuvering. Winding the wrappings over your arm can be a bit of a struggle, but it takes no time at all. When you had no money and couldn’t eat you almost felt guilty when you bought the bandages instead of groceries because you knew, you just fucking knew, there was an aura over you and the craving started until it was all you could think about. A deep itch in your bones and your whole body felt hollow. You only felt a little bad though. The dull pangs of hunger burned much slower and more discreetly than ripping yourself to shreds anyway.

Running your hands through your inky hair you check your phone, it’s Eren again. He’s worried about you. He believes in you. You’ve told him to not have faith in you, but he fought you. Every time he says, _You’re stronger than that_ it destroys you a little bit. Because you’re not, you’re really not, and you laugh a little bitterly because doesn’t he understand? You’re not strong. You do this to yourself. You’re not a victim. You want it. You want it and you can’t deny it and what’s so fucking strong about that? It’s just a disappointment. You’re not a martyr.

Sometimes you think about dying but you lack the strength to take your life. You want things, you’re human. You think your biggest flaw is hope. You think about Eren. Maybe you could have been together, but love has always been evasive to you. You think about arms wrapped around you like the bandages around your arm but it’s not like you need someone to take care of you. It’s an insult. It’s obvious you can’t take care of yourself but how disgusting is it to think that you expect someone to save you? Why do you set yourself up like this? This is your life. You may have fucked it up but you don’t want it to exist solely for the purpose of someone else. It’s yours. When did society start caring more about finding someone else than they did about finding themselves? When did _you_ start thinking that way?

No one’s going to fix that yawning, gaping blackhole inside of you.

You tell him it’s okay. It’s not like you’ll do anything drastic tonight (though your thoughts have flickered there once or twice). You don’t want to die. You’re not within range of a weapon anyway, and you’re seeing people tomorrow. Sure your sleeves can hide your bandages and your excuses can hide your truths but you’d rather not risk it. You would rather keep it to yourself. It’s nothing like people tell you. He stopped messaging you anyway.


End file.
